[Marxism] Whither America

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Newsweek reports that Bush has jumped far ahead of Kerry in the polls:

"Coming out of the Republican National Convention in New York, President 
George W. Bush now holds a 11-point lead over Democratic challenger Sen. 
John Kerry (52 percent to 41 percent) in a three-way race, according to the 
latest NEWSWEEK poll. The poll was taken over two nights, both before and 
after Bush?s acceptance speech. Respondents who were queried only on 
Friday, after Bush?s speech, gave the Republican a 16-point lead over Kerry.

"The 11-point lead represents a 13-point bounce for Bush since an Aug. 5 to 
Aug. 10 poll conducted by Newsweek?s pollster, Princeton Survery Research 
Associates, for the Pew Research Center. The president?s post-convention 
bounce was substantial vs. the two-point increase received by Kerry after 
last month?s Democratic National Convention and in line with the size of 
other post-convention bounces."

full: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5915140/site/newsweek/

This has thrown the Democratic Party establishment into a crisis.

Many urge Kerry to sharpen his attack and even "get nasty" like the 
Republicans. Time Magazine's Joe Klein, who began his career as a columnist 
with the "alternative" Village Voice", sums up the differences between the 
2 candidates:

"I have never seen a presidential campaign in which the strategies of the 
two parties are so different, and so dreadful. The Republican strategy is 
to demolish Kerry, posit the President as a man of simple strength and do 
everything possible to avoid a discussion of Iraq or the effects of 
globalization on the American economy. The Kerry strategy is to present an 
"optimistic" candidate with a "positive plan for the future." The Kerry 
consultants, who actually believe this claptrap and have zero sense of 
political theater, sound like a bunch of low-budget Ginzu-knife salesmen 
when they represent their candidate on television: We're offering you a 
$4,000 college-tuition tax credit and?for no extra charge?a $1,000 
reduction in your health-care costs! They also seem to believe this 
election isn't about the most important decision Bush has made: to go to 
war in Iraq. Kerry's adherence to that strategy?including the robotic 
repetition of the words strong and values?has made him seem weak, 
transparent, a focus-group marionette with neon strings. Bush, by the way, 
used the word strong only twice in his acceptance speech: to describe the 
new Iraqi Prime Minister and to describe military families."

full: 
http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,692822,00.html

Kerry's approach is nothing new. It is the same as every single Democratic 
Party candidate since Jimmy Carter. It can best be described as Republican 
Party lite. It is also a losing strategy. Carter failed to be re-elected 
after voters got a taste of his "life can be unfair" policies. Although 
Clinton has been viewed as some kind of vindication of these politics, the 
plain fact is that he owed his first term to Ross Perot's siphoning votes 
away from the Republican Party. He won a second term because the Viagra 
salesman Robert Dole was a singularly unattractive candidate.

Although the implosion of the Democratic Party might seem like a peculiarly 
USA phenomenon, it has precedents in European history. In both Germany and 
France, the social democracy and liberal parties kept shifting to the right 
under the unrelenting pressure of the fascist and ultra-nationalist 
movements. Like Kerry, they sought to appear "reasonable" and "patriotic". 
This is a formula for disaster.

In his polemical attack on the Radical Party in "Whither France", Trotsky 
had these choice words for this bourgeois party, which despite its name, 
had lots in common with our own Democratic Party:

"It is not the spirit of combination among parliamentarians and 
journalists, but the legitimate and creative hatred of the oppressed for 
the oppressors which is today the single most progressive factor in 
history. It is necessary to turn to the masses, toward their deepest 
layers. It is necessary to appeal to their passions and to their reason. It 
is necessary to reject the false 'prudence' which is a synonym for 
cowardice and which, at great historical turning points, amounts to treason."

full: 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936/witherfrance/index.htm#wh 
ither


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